PREVIEW: Winter Olympics 2018: Two favourites and a dark horse

By Peter Auf der Heyde Jun 30, 2011, 13:32 GMT

Berlin - The International Olympic Committee (IOC) meets in Durban, South Africa, for its 123rd session July 4 to 9, with the announcement of the 2018 Winter Olympic host topping the agenda.

The race to host the Games is seen as a two-horse competition between Munich and South Korea's Pyeongchang, with the French town of Annecy being given very few chances.

Pyeongchang has twice before bid for the Games, but lost out to Vancouver (2010) and Sochi (2014), while Munich, which would be co-hosting the Games with Garmisch-Partenkirchen, is hoping to become the first city to host both Winter and Summer Games.

IOC President Jacques Rogge is confident that all three cities will be able to host fantastic Games, while the IOC Evaluation Commission is similarly confident that the three bidding cities are capable of hosting the Games.

Munich and Pyeongchang are like two sides of a coin.

On the one hand you have Munich and Garmisch Partenkirchen - both cities with a huge winter tradition in a country with a huge winter tradition.

That is a point that German IOC Vice-President Thomas Bach and two-time Olympic figure skating champion Katarina Witt, who is fronting the Munich bid, have stressed time and again.

'40 per cent of all Olympic revenue is generated by the Winter Olympics,' Bach points out, with Witt adding: 'And 50 per cent of all winter sport sponsors are German companies.'

The interest in winter sport that Germany has is something that Pyeongchang lacks and not surprisingly they have built the Koreans bid around the concept of 'New Horizons'.

They are hoping to convince the IOC members to vote for Pyeongchang to open up new markets in the most populated continent.

South Korean Minister of Culture Choung Byoung-gug has given an assurance that the government is fully behind the bid and will pump 500 million dollars into the programme to develop sport (Drive the Dream) by 2018.

But while Munich and Pyeongchang are considered the front-runners and are grabbing all the headlines, Annecy is given only an outside chance.

Even top French IOC official Jean-Claude Killy, who won three Alpine skiing Olympic gold medals and is still considered as one of the best-ever skiers, has been remarkably silent in his support for Annecy.

Another indication that even the French do not really believe in Annecy's chances is the fact that French president Nicolas Sarkozy will be conspicuous by his absence in Durban.

German State President Christian Wulff as well as South Korean President Lee Myung-bak will be travelling to South Africa.

Sarkozy, however, will be represented by the French Minister of Sport, Roselyne Bachelot.

The 45-year-old Witt believes that the IOC should return to the traditional roots of winter sport.

Ironically, one of the people representing Pyeongchang's bid is one of Witt's successors as figure skating champion Kim Yu-na, prompting international media to compare the race to host the 2018 Games to a showdown between the two golden women of figure skating.

However, that is something that seems to be of more concern for the media than for IOC members and Vitaly Smirnov, who has been an IOC member since 1971 says that the IOC will chose the best candidate.

'I have been a member of the IOC for 40 years and can say one thing. None of the IOC members will ever be persuaded by charm,' the Russian said.